The Arsenic Century

How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play

James C. Whorton

The vivid history of arsenic in the nineteenth century and how the Victorians used it in their daily life

How the Victorians accidentally poisoned themselves with their use of arsenic in everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing

Tells its sinister parallel story as the Victorian poison of choice for murder and suicide

The Arsenic Century

How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play

James C. Whorton

Description

Arsenic is rightly infamous as the poison of choice for Victorian murderers. Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident.

Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's
reach.

Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.

The Arsenic Century

How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play

James C. Whorton

Table of Contents

1. 'Such an Instrument of Death and Agony'2. 'A New Race of Poisoners'3. A New Breed of Detectives4. 'The Chief Terror of Poisoners'5. A Penn'orth of Poison6. 'Sugared Death'7. 'The Hue of Death, the Tint of the Grave'8. Walls of Death9. Physician-assisted Poisoning10. 'A Very Wholesome Poison'11. Poison in the Factory and on the Farm12. 'Dangers that Lie Wait in the Pint-Pot'NotesIndex

The Arsenic Century

How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play

James C. Whorton

Author Information

James C. Whorton is Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has written numerous articles and books on the history of medicine and health, including Nature Cures. The History of Alternative Medicine in America, also published by Oxford University Press.